This Thing I Like to Call “Passive Editing” and How It Works…

Back in February I made a post outlining my Grand Master Plan for editing my 500+ page novel.

Now it is April, and as some of you know, April is Camp NaNoWriMo. For Camp this year, I made the goal of spending 30 hours (or more) editing my novel for April. On April 1st, I began. In keeping with my Grand Master Plan, I am now in Phase One.

Phase One involves what I’ve taken to calling “Passive Editing”. Now, usually when I edit something, I go line by line and brutally analyze every single word. Thus, editing even a few pages takes me a million years, as you might imagine. However, since attending several writing workshops over the past year and hearing from editors and agents themselves that they will, indeed, forgive the occasional comma misplacement (*cringe*), typo (*gasp*), or dangling modifier (*shriek*) if the story and characters are engaging enough (because all that other stuff is what their copy editors are for, anyway), I’ve recently forced (and I do mean FORCED) myself to be more lenient in my editing escapades.

I’m going to try really hard while editing this monster novel to not spend hours and days on one page (because I totally could) and instead attempt to edit mostly the larger issues … or at least, edit the larger issues first.

But then there’s the fact I wrote this monster novel over the course of 19 months. And the bulk of that writing was done in two months spread a year apart in a blur of word wars for National Novel Writing Month. And then after I wrote THE END I took two entire months totally away from the manuscript.

So needless to say, I can’t hardly remember a darn thing about it. So how am I supposed to connect the larger story arc and see the plot holes when I don’t remember the plot to begin with?

Enter … Passive Editing. 😀

First, I put the whole rough draft together in document form. Then I ordered a trade paperback copy complete with pretty cover and back cover blurb from Lulu.com. WHY? Well for one, because I wanted to hold my own damn book. But for two, because I hate reading on the computer screen! Hate it! And if I’m reading on the computer, I can just click a few buttons and begin to really edit.

And that’s not what I want right now.

What about a Kindle or some such, you say? Well, that’s okay too. In fact I have a copy on my Kindle. But I can’t write on my Kindle screen, can I?

Because secondly, the paperback copy is tangible and real, and gives me something to scribble in. Yeah, I paid $20 damn bucks for that thing and I’m still gonna write in it!

But not a lot.

So here is how my Phase One of Editing works:

The tools.
credit: J. R. Frontera

I open my rough draft Scrivener file on the laptop. I open my assigned Primus editing notebook. I have my paperback novel copy handy. Each chapter gets it’s own notebook page. I begin each Chapter’s editing notes by copying down any margin notes I made while writing the rough draft in Scrivener’s handy Document Notes section. (This is one of the many reasons Scrivener is THE.BOMB.)

I then read that chapter in the paperback copy, and as I go I create a bulleted list of things I want to fix during my “active editing” revision round. These are not detailed things. These are large issues.

Like so.
credit: J. R. Frontera

If I notice I’m using a lot of -ing verbs, I’ll just make a note: — check for -ing verbs.

I’ve noticed I have Vince snapping things a lot. “Blah blah blah,” he snapped. So, I wrote that down as an editing note: — Vince snaps a lot. Fix this.

There is also a certain sentence structure which I LOVE apparently more than life itself. I won’t point it out to you, because then you’ll never un-see it. But I see it, now. And if I notice it rears its ugly head too much in a chapter, I’ll put that down, too: — Watch for your favorite sentence structure and fix!

But there are also larger story issues I document as well. Especially things like timeline, injuries, character appearance, and geographic layout of my cities. These things I’ll put in caps, to make sure they are seen as important: — TIMELINE: when does this chapter happen?! Said it was sunset in Chapter 10… how long were they walking? Possibly move this chapter before 10.
— APPEARANCE: Amy has freckles.
— INJURY: Vince has cut on right fingers from brick.
— GEOGRAPHY: map distance from Flea’s hideout to Fotini’s clinic.

And so on and so forth. If I notice an especially clunky sentence, I’ll put an asterick next to it in the paperback copy, then make an editing note thusly: — pg. 103 * = long, awkward sentence, fix.

I’ll underline questionable words or phrases, fix pronoun confusion, cross out unnecessary words, each time I mark on the paperback copy, I simply make a brief notebook note, often as simple as the page number and the words “see note”. Which means, “see the marks you put in the book”.

And sometimes I catch myself being just outright ridiculous, as in this case. Adumbration?! Seriously? I don’t think so.

Come on now.
credit: J. R. Frontera

Thus far this method has proven not only extraordinarily efficient, but useful. I can read the story for the story so it’s easy to catch any gaping plot holes or mistakes, and I can keep track of all those things without having to take myself completely out of the story in order to fix it right then.

I then keep track of my daily goals and progress on my handy-dandy, homemade Word Quota Tracker:

Black is the goal, red is what was completed. Voila!
credit: J. R. Frontera

Once I’ve read through the entire novel, I will then go back and begin Phase Two … which will be the actual fixing of all the things compiled in the trusty Editing Notebook. What will be especially nice in that case though, I think, is that I’ve almost got a To Do list pre-made. I can check the items off one by one as I address them in my Phase Two Active Editing Stage.

The only thing I might do before entering Phase Two is write the missing or incomplete scenes. I hate to take time off reading to write these scenes, but neither do I want to be in full-on editing mode. So perhaps the writing of these missing or incomplete scenes will be Phase One Point Five, or something.

Who knows. As I said, this is my first go round at editing a monster novel in a ridiculous number of years. And the last time I attempted this, I never finished.

That will not happen this time. This time I have a plan. This time I am sticking to my plan. This time my plan appears to be working!

In five days of reading/passive editing, I’ve gone through 11 chapters. That blows away my previous editing timeframes already. I feel like this is a good compromise between wanting to read just for story, and wanting to remember what needs to be fixed while it still really stands out.

So. Here’s to hoping. If you’d like to follow my progress in this adventure, I’ll be updating almost daily on Twitter under #CampNaNoWriMo and #AprWritingChallenge. I’m @lightning_bug_, so come say hi and keep me on-task!

Happy Writing, Editing, and Reading y’all!